Portugal and the Dynamics of Smallness

The problem of smallness is no longer one that countries like Portugal have to face alone, but one that faces the whole world. The world today is small in the sense that there are no empty spaces out there anymore; we have reached the limits of the model of

growth that drove modernity. That model was imperial and wasteful of resources, and it has increasingly turned against itself. The smallness of Portugal, both in political and economic terms, is no longer alone a Portuguese problem, but one of global dimensions: in environmental, legal, financial and social terms.